Start with a Script
A director without a script will make a bad movie. Likewise, a novice storyteller without a script is a recipe for a clunky story. I believe that using a good script is critical for your success as a CI storyteller.
A script is a roadmap. It will prevent you from getting lost and help you plan out your journey in advance. What vocabulary are you going to target? What do yo want learners to know how to say by the end of the story? What themes do you want to discuss? You can know all of this in advance by using a good script (or writing your own). Like my dad always said, it’s easier to reach your destination if you know where you are going.
WRITING THE SCRIPT
A script should be a rough outline of a complete story that uses vocabulary you want to target. Below is a sample script I’ve written for us to examine.
Johnny is ten years old. He likes cupcakes. He wants to eat 38 cupcakes. There is a problem. There are only 37 cupcakes. Johnny eats the cupcakes, but is very sad. He wants to eat another cupcake.
Johnny goes to his friend Jane’s house. There is one perfect cupcake on the counter. It is for Jane’s birthday. Johnny must decide between his friendship with Jane and eating the cupcake.
Johnny eats the cupcake. Johnny is very happy. Jane is very sad. She cries and cries until she drowns in a river of her own tears.
While no script is perfect, our example has all the elements of a good story. There is main character. At this point we only know a few things about him, but it’s enough to get started. We will develop more when we tell the story as a class. We know Johnny has a problem. We know Johnny tries to solve his problem and is faced with a moral choice. It’s a surprisingly compelling story from such a ridiculous premise.
Notice the groups of underlined words. These are places where you can let the students decide the details. It is in these pre-determined places that you should deviate from the script and let the students come up with a better story. They are many, and you are but one. More brains lead to more ideas. As you filter down through their ideas as a class, a clear winner of an idea is usually obvious.
For example, perhaps the character is called “Paco” and is a 57-year-old high school French teacher. These details add life and a sense of ownership to the story.
Additionally, letting students get more involved in the process builds community and trust, two essential ingredients to a healthy language classroom. Once the story is being asked, the story now belongs to the learners being asked to come up with answers. Within reason, of course. You have the power to override suggested details whenever you see fit.
TARGETING STRUCTURES WITH TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE
One incredibly useful technique that enables more complex and, therefore, more interesting stories is Total Physical Response (TPR). There are many ways to pick TPR phrases, but my favorite is to look through the script for 3-6 words or phrases you can target with TPR. These phrases are the footholds your students will use to climb throughout the storytelling process. Here’s an step-by-step process:
1. Display the phrases on the screen.
2. Add an English gloss of these words to maximize efficiency of presentation.
3. Invent a gesture for each word and make sure everyone does the gesture with you.
4. Encourage them to repeat the word or phrase as they learn it, although this is not strictly necessary.
The physical movement part of TPR is an integral piece of the puzzle. Make sure your students do the gestures along with you. Tying the gesture to the meaning of a word in L2 is the magic of TPR. It short-circuits English in the brain and lets the learner jump right to L2.
With this short-circuiting in mind, the last slide of my TPR vocabulary deck is always a list of the target phrases in L2, no English in sight. While not absolutely necessary, I want to take away the crutch of English after presenting this vocabulary on day one of the story.
Day 1: Spanish > English > Gesture
Day 2: Spanish > Gesture
Day 3: Gesture > Spanish
When I was a novice storyteller, I would only target 3 phrases. I wanted to make it as easy for learners as possible. But the longer I’ve been doing this, the more I’ve been leaning towards 4-6 phrases. TPR allows learners to handle additional new phrases with ease, and having more footholds gives them an advantage when it comes time to engage with the actual story.
As my students ramp up their abilities, I tend to add more TPR vocabulary to the deck.
Here is an example of what presenting TPR might look like:
TELLING THE STORY USING THE SCRIPT
Some people call this part of the storytelling process “story asking” because it involves starting with a statement from the script, and then circling around that sentence with repetitive questions that the class answers out loud. Take the following example.
Instructor: Johnny is ten years old.
Instructor: How old is johnny?
Class: Johnny is ten.
Instructor: Is Johnny ten or 15?
Class: Johnny is ten.
Instructor: How old is Bill? (This is the same question as the first grammatically, it’s okay to change the questions slightly)
A student suggestion: Bill is 15.
Instructor: Is Johnny 15?
Class: No, Johnny is not 15.
Instructor: Who is 15?
Class: Bill is 15.
Instructor: How old is Johnny?
Class: Johnny is ten.
Starting from a simple sentence, we can easily generate 10 or more questions and answers that are variations of the original sentence. I know it sounds repetitive, but the subtle way of changing the way you ask the question makes the learners feel like they are new questions. It’s a beautiful hack of the human mind, and allows for exponentially more comprehensible and communicative reps in L2.
When you sense that learners have figured out this sentence, move on to the next statement and repeat this process. Following the script will help you stay on track and move through the story in a structured, logical way. A good script guides you sentence by sentence and allows you to move forward when enough students have caught on.
IMPROVISING
You are in no way bound to the script. If you feel comfortable branching out… Do it! It’s fun for the students and liberating for the teacher.
A WORD OF CAUTION
Improvising a story in the classroom will likely break your script. A story can crash and burn if you don’t know how to end it or if you get lost in the middle. The script is a road map that will get you to where you want to go, even if you’re not ready to come finish the story on they fly just yet.
Each time you tell a story, you’ll rely on the script less and less. At this stage, I am improvising all of my stories in class, no paper script to be found anywhere. That said, I still have a fallback. I have the old scripts kicking around in my head, memorized after years of teaching my favorite stories. Until you’re at that point, I suggest keeping the script within reach.
REVIEW + WORKSHEET
This lesson is dense, and you’ll need some time to process it. I highly recommend you take a few more minutes out of your day to complete the worksheet for this lesson. It will help you review the material presented here and guide you in writing your first CI story script.
WANT MORE DIRECTION?
If you want to try this out for a week, but don't want to spend the time creating all the materials yourself, the CI Immersion Storytelling Starter Pack may be a fit for you. It includes an original story script (English/Spanish), TPR vocabulary slides (Spanish), five lesson plans with notes to the instructor, the same five lesson plans without annotations in a printable format, a brief version and complete version of a story based on the script, five entry tasks, and several story-based input tasks that guide learners from input to output.